


For Barter Only

by AnDelenDir



Category: Stingray (US TV)
Genre: Affection - Freeform, F/M, Hospitals, Illnesses, Near Death Experience, remembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 22:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnDelenDir/pseuds/AnDelenDir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daphne Delgado is a judge now, but when she is asked about a stranger who noted down her name for barter she is intrigued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Barter Only

**Author's Note:**

  * For [partly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partly/gifts).



> As a treat for a fellow Stingray fan!

"Your Honor, a moment please?"

The security guard at the gate signalled her, phone in hand, then stepped outside, carrying the receiver with him. She rolled down the car window.

"A phone call, your office, Your Honor," he said and handed her the phone. That wasn't a rarity. Ever since she had been appointed senior of the juvenile court her workday had ceased to know halfway fixed hours. She took the receiver, and smiled reassuringly at him.

"Delgado here."

"I'm sorry Ms Delgado," her secretary said, his clean baritone distinctive. "There's been a very curious phone call just a few moments ago. A nurse Bishop, from the Mayo hospital." He hesitated, then continued in a carefully neutral tone. "She said they have a John Doe there. He's badly hurt, nothing on him, except a small, black notebook which says _For Barter Only_ on its cover. One of the few names in there which made sense and which weren't crossed out was yours, though it still said assistant D.A.. So she called your office, I am holding her on the other line. What do I tell her?"

"That I'll be there right away."

\--~o~--

She hated hospitals, she had hated them even before she had taken to visiting Eddie Cantero once a week. After he had been reduced to a giggling six-year-old with a preference for funny cartoons. She hadn't grown to like them better over the course of the past eleven years either. But there was only one man who would have such a notebook with her name in it.

It took a while to sort things out, the sprawling clinic far too large to not be treating a few  John and Jane Does at any given time. She knew from several of her cases that they took in a large and regular contingent of welfare and homeless patients. Once they had located the surgical nurse who had called her office they shuttled her through the hospital smoothly, equipped her with a full set of scrubs and led her to a bed in a long row of identical beds inside the intensive care ward.

It was the last place Daphne wanted to be, yet she approached the figure only partially covered with a thin sheet, gritting her teeth in preparation for what she would see. She kept her eyes trained on the mottled green floor, not ready to look at his mutilated body. Not expected to survive the night, they had told her. Too grieveously injured, they had said, a small chance only. And shaken their heads with well-trained sympathy. They must think she was a relative.

Part of her had always wondered whether she would ever see him again, as Jennifer had assured her so long ago. But given what George with his Langley connections and the Pentagon training had told her of Ray's most likely peers she hadn't expected him to even survive half as many years.

She lifted her eyes at last and took in the long, lean legs, trembling in time with rough, almost inaudible moaning. There were dressings on the legs, and when she let her eyes roam also on his torso. Important looking stitches covered with caterpillar medical tape, cotton pads secured to shelter holes in that velvety soft skin where tubes vanished into the cavity of his chest draining fluid from inside him. She stretched out her hand, her fingers aching to touch that skin she had never quite forgotten. A sprinkling of dark hair on what she could see of his chest, peppered with gray. She swallowed and took the last step which would bring her face to face with him.

He wasn't intubated, but his breathing was laboured and rasped in and out, loud and not something she associated with the man before her. The same face, a different style to his hair, much shorter, and also touched with gray, a few more lines of worry and compassion. But yes, it was him alright.

She pulled the chair closer from where it was pushed against the wall. One of those to each bed, none other occupied at the moment. She sat and after a moment she slipped her hand into his, mindful of the infusion tube. His fingers were relaxed and unresponsive, but she could remember them well, trailing gently across her face and down her arms.

It struck the analytical part of her mind as rather interesting just how much she had forgotten about so many encounters with different people, yes, also with men she had bedded. But for some reason every moment with this one had etched itself firmly into her consciousness and never dulled. She stretched out her other hand and ran it in a soothing motion along his arm, right up to the shoulder and back again. Over and over. She doubted it would hurt him, what harm could there be in giving someone so on the edge some tenderness?

Time acquainted her with vague and minute changes: a breath he caught and expelled but several heartbeats later, a small stutter in the rhythm of the machine tracing his heartbeat with a low, musical chime. Trembling now and then, and with that he clenched his teeth and arched his back, and on occasion large chunks of time saturated with deep breathing and what looked like quietude. Or was he slipping away?

The nurses came and went, as quiet and diffident as the patients in the ward, and after a while time lost its meaning. It was a vigil she owed. None of them disturbed her where she was, even when they added something to his IV bag or checked the many drains and tubes. She was almost asleep when one of the nurses arrived at her side, and cleared her throat. She looked up.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," the nurse said. "We wonder whether you could tell us who he is? There was nothing on him, and the police just informed us that his fingerprints are in no system they have access to."

Daphne couldn't help smiling. Trust him to still be an enigma to everyone.

"I don't know his name," she answered after a long moment. "He drove a black Corvette and bartered only." She glanced at the other woman. "If this is about costs, just bill everything to me. I will pay."

It seemed to have been the right answer, for the nurse left, a relieved expression on her face, and she could concentrate again on the man at her side.

\--~o~--

A change in rhythm, the hint of early morning though the intensive care ward had no windows. She caught her breath, and leaned over his still, almost motionless form. Frightened all of a sudden. No, he was alive, and breathing. Breathing quietly now. She sat back on the chair, almost shaking with relief.

"Don't think... don't think you paid up with this." A hoarse, almost inaudible whisper.

Unable to say anything she shook her head, tears streaming down her face. She made no move to hide them.

"I know," she managed to say at last. "I know, Ray."

 

~~End~~


End file.
